After turning the tiles faceup on the dining room table, she plucked out the letters that spelled out Jade Tarnno. For an hour, she rearranged them, writing down possible combinations in her notebook.

Ajar Tendon

Ad Jan Toner

Dean Jar Ton

Dear Jan Not

Trade Jan On

And Roan Jet

It all looked like nonsense. Maybe she was on the wrong track. Maybe Bob had truly forgotten her parents’ names.

She pushed the letters back into the center, and picked out the ones that spelled add Ken Pipem. Once again, she created a long list, mostly a random series of short words.

But there was at least one possible long word. She sucked in a breath.

Kidnap.

That still left a d, a p, two e’s, and an m. She swapped the remaining tiles back and forth until finally she had a phrase.

Kidnapped me.

She again selected the letters that made up Jade Tarnno. The J in Jade made her think of something. Someone. Already guessing the answer, she pulled out the letters that spelled out Joanne. That left her with d-t-a-r. Which could be rearranged to spell Dart. Joanne Dart.

And wasn’t that what Officer Rubio had called her? Ms. Dart?

So together the two phrases read Joanne Dart kidnapped me.

Bridget’s breath went shallow. Should she go to the police? But she could already imagine their skepticism. Besides, she’d only solved part of his email. There had to be more information hidden in the rest. She kept reading it over until finally she saw it. The clue was hiding in plain sight. It started with the next sentence: The rest of this letter details what I’m trying to get right on my third attempt, at least initially.

There was no way Bob was working on a third draft. If he was, his queries would have become more frequent, but instead they had dwindled to nothing.

She focused on the sentence’s last clause … at least initially. Was she supposed to look at the first letter of each word?

Bridget picked up her pen.

c y h w r e c y l u w d c b i o t n c t m w i t l t h a p o w n o f a d b a c b o a s w b t m i w p n s m h w a e c t l j k p

She could see words like wit, own, fad and boas, but they seemed random, coincidences in a string of nonsense.

Third attempt. Maybe she was supposed to look at the first letter of every third word? Within a few seconds, it was clear that was the solution.

And finally Bridget had the whole thing. The second reassuring email must have been false, written under duress. Or perhaps written by someone else entirely. Horror washed over her as she reread Bob’s last true message.